Activist or Public Servant
Why I do not support the Priestly/Cole Amendment
Passing bills in the legislature is difficult – and it should be.
Our job is to make decisions that deeply affect our fellow citizens: to levy taxes; to pass laws and regulations; and to fund the government. That is a serious job that takes an extraordinary amount of work and care.
We need to make sure that laws passed don’t do harm, and we need to be careful to understand all points of view, the potential impacts and the real world consequences.
Each legislator navigates a decision-making system that includes 181 people (150 representatives; 30 senators and 1 governor). We work to understand the policy, the politics involved and the human personalities.
In my view, the best legislators are public servants who have an ability to understand and have empathy with all points of view. And they are able – and willing – to find compromise and strive for balance. They value coalitions, collaboration and compromise.
Some legislators have a more activist mindset. They see their role as vigorously advocating for their point of view and ideology. For these legislators, balance and compromise isn’t the point. Their goal is to advocate, even if the end result is a symbolic performance.
You can probably tell the type of legislator that I strive to be. Every day, I aim to listen carefully, learn and do research and to do my very best to help serve the public by crafting policies that better the lives of Vermonters.
Last week, a bill came to the House floor that shows this dynamic. The bill had already gone through a comprehensive vetting process in committee and had bipartisan support. However, when it came to the floor it attracted a floor amendment – one that highlighted tactics of more activist oriented progressive legislators, as well as the influence of progressive lobbying groups.
Amendment on H.933: The Miscellaneous Tax Bill
H.933 is an excellent bill that the House Ways and Means Committee spent months working on. It includes a variety of tax policy updates, expands research and development tax credits for small businesses and aligns Vermont tax policy with federal tax policy.
However, there was a last minute floor amendment introduced that would have increased taxes on people who earn more than $500,000 a year. I understand why people like that idea. Our country has an appalling degree of wealth inequality, and the wealthiest people in our country do not pay their fair share of taxes. I very much support federal tax increases. For state income tax, I have a lot of questions and concerns.
My colleagues and I received many emails from constituents urging us to support this amendment. Generally they were responding to action alerts from progressive organizations that are part of the Fair Share Vermont Coalition. These action alerts frame the issue as black and white: you either support taxing wealthy people or you don’t. As I expect everyone can imagine, the issue is a whole lot more complicated than that.
To avoid a messy debate on the House floor, the sponsors of the amendment and the House leadership agreed to pull the amendment and it will be considered later in the session by the Ways and Means Committee.
I was planning to vote no on the amendment. I very much support progressive taxation, however, I will only support a proposal to raise taxes if – and only if:
The policy has been properly vetted by a committee to understand impacts. Only about 3,600 Vermont tax returns report an income of over $500,000. That is not very many people. What if just a small number of them move out of state as a result? What exactly are the tax proposals? What are intended and unintended consequences? If enacted, preliminary estimate are the amendment changes would raise an estimated $110 million. What would it be used for? Those are the types of issues that would be considered by the committee.
A broad coalition of stakeholders supports the policy. The advocacy for this policy has come entirely from progressive activist organizations. Now contrast this to the incredible organizing work done by Let’s Grow Kids to fund systemic transformation of the childcare system in Vermont. With support of many Republicans and business leaders – as well as progressive organizations – we enacted a payroll tax to fund childcare. That process took coalition building, collaboration and compromise.
There is a political path of success. In other words, a majority of both chambers and the governor would (or even might) support it. Even if the wealth tax legislation passed both the House and the Senate (which is highly unlikely), no one thinks the Governor would sign it or the legislature could override a veto. There is an opportunity (and political) cost to pursuing legislation that we know will fail.
The reality is that the sponsors and advocates of this amendment pushed it forward as a political performance. They knew that it had no chance of success They sent out action alerts and got some news stories. They also lost some credibility from people like me.
Let’s be public servants and put people and outcomes over ideology.